Fewer films need "improvement" than Robert Harmon's taut n' terrifying mid-80s nailbiter "The Hitcher", which remains a textbook example of how to do a thriller right. Rutger Hauer's John Ryder ranks with Hannibal Lecter and John Doe as the creepiest kook ever realized on celluloid, and two decades later, I'm still getting over what happened to Jennifer Jason Leigh. And other than Spielberg's "Duel", no other filmmaker has combined the existential with the visceral with the skill of Harmon (further props: he made a C. Thomas Howell film bearable).
Of course, there's a remake in the works, now that filmmakers seem to have remade every horror film released in the 1970s with the possible exception of "Slithis". Making his feature debut with this one is music video sensation David Meyers, and Eric Red's screenplay has been updated by Jake Wade Wall, whose revamp of "When A Stranger Calls" didn't leave much of an impression.
But the project got interesting this week with the signing of Sean Bean in the title role. Bean, last seen in a rare "good guy" role in the underrated "Silent Hill", will don Ryder's duster and make life on and off a mountain road a living hell for some as-yet-unsigned young buck or possibly "One Tree Hill"s Sophia Buck, who's listed on the cast list but her role is not yet defined (is she stepping in for C. Thomas, Jennifer J.?)
Read all about the recent tragedy in screenwriter Eric Red's life here--in which he endured his own nightmare on the road...
